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From: baparao@uscvax.UUCP (Bapa Rao)
Newsgroups: net.nlang.india
Subject: Re: Plunder by the British
Message-ID: <276@uscvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 24-Nov-85 18:00:59 EST
Article-I.D.: uscvax.276
Posted: Sun Nov 24 18:00:59 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 29-Nov-85 08:24:03 EST
References: <11@sbcs.UUCP> <101800012@uiucdcs>
Reply-To: baparao@usc-cse.UUCP (Bapa Rao)
Organization: CS&CE Depts, U.S.C., Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 66

In article <101800012@uiucdcs> reddy@uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU writes:
>Changing the topic, has it ever been established that the British plundered
>India?  Does anybody have figures representing the rate of growth in India
>for a substantial period before the British arrived in India, and the rate
>of growth during the British rule?  If the British did plunder India, what
>did they plunder and howmuch?
>
>I have'nt seen a detailed study of these issues, but what I have seen
>suggests that India progressed faster during the British rule than before it.

I have no figures at hand about the "rate of growth" that Reddy talks about,
but it would seem to be a reasonable conjecture that the conventional
macroeconomic "rate of growth" figures would be higher during British rule
than before the arrival of the British.

However, I feel that Reddy is jumping to conclusions when he equates "rate
of growth" with "national progress" in his second paragraph. When an
industrial economy such as post-industrial revolution England's encounters a
predominantly agricultural, settled economy such as that of pre-British
India, the industrial power tends to play a predatory or colonising role,
while the pre-industrial economy plays the role of victim or colony.  The
result is the enrichment of the industrial power, and impoverishment of the
people of the "colony". 

The industrial power doesn't have to be foreign, nor do their stated
intentions to exploit the colony (though both conditions are satisfied in
the case of the 18th century British East India Company).  Colonizing
conditions can also be the result of misguided national economic policies.
Consider the rural impoverishment and the urban overcrowding prevalent in
the Third World today. This is the result of an industrialized sector of the
country (which may be the private sector, or a national government bent on
massive industrialization, playing the role of the "colonising" power),
growing at the expense of the bulk of the economy which remains rural and
pre-industrial (playing the role of the "colonised" power). In all these
cases, quantitative measures of "economic status" such as GNP, investment
rates etc. show growth, sometimes impressive. But these figures do not
reflect the reality of the quality of life of the people, as judged by their
access to basic amenities of life, purchasing power, their mental outlook,
hopes for the future, etc. In fact, the macro-figures and the quality of
life of the people tend often to run in opposite directions. For "neutral"
(i.e., non-Indian) examples, only look at Mexico or Brazil, or to be really
dramatic, look at Ethiopia (which has the added complicating factor of civil
war, to be fair). 

"India was better off during British Raj than during independence"/"the
British did more good than harm in India: witness the economic growth during
the british era", etc. are popular refrains heard in the West and echoed by
a number of misguided Indians. It is true that  we Indians do display an
avoidable tendency to "blame it on the Brits", as a substitute to taking an
objective look at our national shortcomings. But succumbing to the opposite
myth is not the answer. To say that  British rule in India directly caused
national progress (ignoring the secondary effects of rise of Indian
nationalism and native capitalists) is not only demoralizing to our national
spirit (since it suggests that India had to "wait until the Brits came
along" to make "progress"), but is just plain WRONG.

A couple of convincing (to me) studies that analyze the economic problems of
third world nations are E.F. Schumacher's (what else?) famous "Small is
Beautiful: Economics as if people mattered" (Harper and Row, 1973) and
Gunnar Myrdal's "Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations"
(Random House, 1971). Both spend a good deal of space on India's economy,
and point out the irrelevance of conventional macroeconomic measures to the
Indian (and similar) situation(s).


						--Bapa Rao.